Offshore drilling ban to be lifted

By RYAN GRIM

09/23/2008 06:29 PM EDT

Drill, baby, drill.

After months of demanding that Democrats lift the ban on offshore drilling, Republicans have gotten their wish.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) told reporters Tuesday evening that Democrats were removing the ban from the continuing budget resolution because of a White House veto threat.

But they've vowed to fight another day.

"Chairman Obey negotiated the best package he could get with the White House to take a budget standoff off the table so we can address the larger Bush financial crisis,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill “The White House made it clear any new drilling provision was a non-starter. The future resolution of offshore drilling will have to be addressed with a new President.”

If true, said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), “this capitulation by Democrats following months of Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with record gasoline prices,” The drilling moratorium will be lifted Oct. 1, but don't expect to see oil rigs from the beaches anytime soon.

“Though it may serve folks’ interests to suggest otherwise, Exxon doesn’t get to paddle three miles off the coast of Cape May, drop a drill bit, and start pumping up oil on Oct. 1 if this moratorium expires,” said Chris Tucker, a spokesman for House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). “The only ban that will be lifted on October 1 is the one on the Interior Department doing its job. And even without the moratoria, bureaucracy will ensure that job takes years to complete,”

The current moratorium prevents the Interior Department from studying the impact of offshore drilling. Without such research, drilling leases can’t go forward. When the ban expires, the studies will still need to be completed before drilling can begin. And such research can take up to five years or more.

Still, Republicans are doing the drilling victory dance tonight.

"This is a major victory for Americans who are suffering at the pump,now that Democrats' ridiculous opposition has run out of gas," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). "Now it's time to ensure drilling is expedited and prevent liberals from tying energy production up in endless litigation."

UPDATE: On the day Democrats made their decision official, the Institute for Energy Research, an industry-funded research group, released polling that shows the majority made a popular decision; sixty-five percent of the respondents in the group's bipartisan poll favored repealing the drilling ban, as compared with the 30 percent who would like to keep it in place.

“Repealing this ban represents the biggest paradigm shift in U.S. energy policy in nearly three decades," IER President Thomas Pyle said, before warning "that activist lawsuits and post-election legislation stand to jeopardize this good news, and I fear plans for both are already in the works.”

This week, Democrats were circulating a 30-page “discussion draft” of the continuing resolution that would fund the government through March 6. The draft contained language that would replace the existing ban on offshore drilling with Title I of the Democrats’ energy bill passed last week — a provision that would allow states to allow drilling off their coasts but limit the incentive for them to do so by denying them a share of the revenues.

The GOP called it “a slap in the face to millions of families, seniors and small businesses trying to make ends meet during our nation’s energy crisis.” And a Pelosi aide said Title I has been dropped from the CR.